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2018 Pre and Postconferences

Preconferences for ICA's 2018 Annual Conference will be held from Tuesday 22 to Thursday, 24 May 2018. And postconferences will be held on Tuesday, 29 May 2018. There will be 42 different pre- and postconferences. To register for a pre- or postconference,
click on the corresponding register link below. Registration for the main conference is separate and can be done so here: http://www.icahdq.org/event/ICAPrague2018. Registration deadline for pre- and postconferences is 4 May. We do not accept on-site pre/postconference registrations.

PRECONFERENCES

TUE22 MAY

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WED23 MAY

16th Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC)

OFF-SITE | Kamerlingh Onnes Building at Leiden University (Steenschuur 25, 2311 ES Leiden, The Netherlands). Plenary sessions will take place in lecture theatre A144; panels will be convened in rooms A002, A008, A028, and B016

Description: The field of China internet research has fruitfully tracked communication patterns across the Chinese speaking world, generating lively discussion about different discourses, voices, and media types in Chinese society. The themes of this preconference will augment these efforts by asking how media and communication are bolted to the world. The internet has rapidly become more than a venue for the exchange of information. It is closely intertwined with social interactions, economic exchanges, and the practice of governance. Simultaneously, concerns surrounding the internet are no longer merely confined to free expression and access to information, they have come to include the impact of the internet on the integrity of political systems, personal data protection, terrorist use of ICTs, and cybercrime. There is now much greater complexity in the nature of connectivity that ICTs permit, and therefore the social, economic, and political questions they generate, which CIRC 16 will aim to explore.

Description: The Screen Industries in East-Central Europe Conference (SIECE) investigates the historical and contemporary dimensions of the regional's audiovisual media industries from all angles local, transnational, economic, cultural, social, and political and through a broad range of original scholarship delivered in the form of conceptual papers and empirical case-studies.

Description: The study of populism has never been more important in light of the recent social, political and economic tumult, and developments in transnational media cultures. Across the world there have been numerous populist backlashes against elected governments and their policies. The emergent concerns of citizens about, for example, immigration and economic austerity have been exploited by a range of political opportunists, many with access to media resources. A proliferation of digital and social media is in some countries providing new cultural spaces for these actors to disseminate their messages and gain mainstream media attention. In addition, established political communicators are not immune to the populist impulse. Some mainstream political parties and politicians, for example, have adopted populist rhetoric in order to ensure electoral support, and some mainstream media organizations, facing increasing commercial competition, have pandered to populist political agendas. While populist politics is a well-documented feature of modern political culture, the communicative aspects of populism have been underexplored or ignored. Moreover, populist movements are often analyzed with a particular focus on European and American right-wing movements. But populist movements and upheavals have appeared from the Philippines to India to Turkey to Russia. At the same time, variations of populism have arisen on both the right and the left (and in-between) and surfaced in a variety of political systems and traditions. This pre-conference aims to introduce global perspectives on the study of media, communication and populism, welcoming conceptually innovative submissions that examine populist communication and culture from all around the world. Recognizing the location of the preconference, the Hungarian capital of Budapest, the conference will also dedicate an open-to-the public panel to the rise of populism in East-Central Europe. The panel will feature both academics and practicing journalists from the region. The venue of the conference, Central European University, is also rich in symbolism, as this university has recently been attacked by the populist government of Hungary. The symbolism of this venue will hopefully add to the liveliness of the discussions, which we expect to be relevant to academics in a diverse set of disciplines and fields (communication studies, sociology, political science, cultural studies, history, among others) and to non-academics as well. The pre-conference also aims to be inclusive in perspectives and methodologies. As John B. Judis, author of The Populist Explosion, recently argued, political scientists often make the mistake of focusing on a restrictive definition of populism. In contrast, our aim is to analyze populisms manifestations and connections to media and communication in the broadest possible sense. Relevant communicative processes of populism may include studies of populist symbols, music, political advertising campaigns, social media groups, protest cultures, the narration of political myths, traditional mass media attitudes, media ownership cultures, among others. We particularly welcome unorthodox approaches, ambitious social theories, and debunking of popular myths in relations to populism and communication.

Description: Media literacy is one of the key concepts within modern information and communication societies and a prerequisite for societal, political, and civic participation. The preconference aims to bring together international scholars that conceptualize and investigate media literacy as a lifelong intergenerational project, describing and explaining similarities and differences of generation specific media skills, norms as well as reciprocal mediation processes and practices.

Description: For 15 years, the ICA Mobile Pre-Conference has been an interdisciplinary gathering of scholars, researchers, and practitioners who focus on mobile communication research. In recent years the mobile pre-conference has been organized in the form of several interactive Blue Sky workshops. These provide a venue where scholars can present, learn and discuss their latest ideas, research and skills around a limited number of themes related to mobile communication and mobile media. In this year's workshop, we particularly wish to provide an opportunity for graduate students and new faculty to interact with more experienced mobile researchers, thereby cultivating a supportive and integrated community of mobile scholars. Ideas discussed and presented at the mobile pre-conference have consistently nourished the theoretical and methodological foundations of mobile research, started joint research projects and eventually lead to publications in peer-reviewed journals. In addition to the Blue Sky workshops, the pre-conference features a conference lunch and dinner where scholars will interact in an informal and social atmosphere.

WED23 MAY

Trust, Control, and Privacy: Mediatization of Childhood and Adolescence in the Digital Age

Description: Young people of today are born in a digital environment and are used to observing their parents interacting with digital devices from their earliest days. In a mediatized society all fields of society are increasingly shaped by media and particularily digital media have gained ever more importance with regards to the socialisation of children and adolescents: On the one hand they see other family members using and interacting with digital media and on the other hand they start to use them at a more and more early stage of life. Burke and Marsh (2014; Marsh et al. 2016) stress that this does not only lead to diverse activities and online practices but also that in these experiences the online domain cannot be separated from the offline domain anymore – both are seamlessly merging in children's play and interaction. As Livingstone & Lunt (2014) point out mediatization means that not only the media are changing, but also their effects on institutions and practices across society. Amongst other societal and cultural changes the mediatization of childhood and adolescence challenges concepts of trust, control and privacy as well as their interrelation. Much of this discourse advocates for children and young people’s privacy, at the same time the control parents are seeking might jeopardise their privacy as well. Behind all these processes and meaning-making, on both individual and collective levels, can however be found a more fundamental question of “trust”.

WED23 MAY

Refugees, Religious Threats, and Political Radicalization: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

Description: This preconference aims to shed light on the role of mass or social media during the European refugee crisis. The ongoing migration of refugees seeking shelter within the borders of Europe has fueled the development of increasingly polarized societies within Europe, with some political or societal actors stressing humanitarian values and others stirring
fears of religious threats and rising terror.

Description: Media and communication studies, with its history of linking human and communication rights at crucial 20th century junctions, has a key role in promoting human rights in the 21st century. The media can not only boost human rights consciousness by exposing their violations, but they can inform civic action on unprecedented scales and mobilize humanitarian intervention. On the flip side, media can (and do) injure human rights through politicized reportage and desensitization, where viewers are turned into voyeurs of exotic victimization. Even more ubiquitous bruising of rights is sustained through the pervasive use of surveillant technologies, which bring with them social and historical contingencies.

WED23 MAY

Design as Object, Design as Method: Making Critical Communication Future(s)

Description: Design, making and intervening in the world have captured the attention of communication scholars in recent years. From explaining algorithmic bias on social media to the creation of online storytelling platforms, contemporary questions of communication require an understanding of the affordances, biases and constraints of communication devices, interfaces and systemsâ€”as well as an understanding the work of designers that create these technologies. Furthermore, there is also growing interest in using design as an inventive method in order inquire about the world and build theory through the making of media, things and prototypes. Finally, communication scholars are also being drawn from different academic disciplines and professional practices, collaborating with a wider range of fields, and forming new identities themselves as they move into new areas that engage with the field of design. This pre-conference explores the conceptual, methodological and pedagogical possibilities of design research in the field of communication. What are the material and social arrangements that produce the artifacts that exist in nearly every aspect of our everyday life? How might we understand these artifacts better if we engage with them using design research methods? How might design help communication researchers better address the materiality of information? This inaugural meeting will bring together scholars from a variety of communication subfields to begin outlining the core contributions of design research and identify conceptual bridges between the fields of design and communication. We aim to engage scholars working in a variety of formats who take design as an object of study, those who integrate design as a method of embodied knowledge making, and those who are forming new scholarly and professional identities through collaboration and participation in design research and practice. We expect to draw from communication scholarship about a range of topics including: visual communication (e.g. graphic design), technology studies (e.g. software coding), rhetoric of material culture (e.g. architecture), media studies, infrastructure studies, and social histories of technology. We pay special attention to the ways in which design and designers play an important role in the making of communication technologies, as well as considering their values, ethics, justice and equality. We anticipate the inclusion of projects that go beyond traditional academic texts and explore the use of multimedia, video, interfaces and prototypes. As a result of the pre-conference, we will collaboratively produce a list of â€œDesign Keywords" for critical considerations of design within the field of communication.

WED23 MAY

Examining the Construction of Roma Identity, Voice, and Representation

Description: Romani experiences are a significant topic of discussion in the Czech Republic and with the conference taking place in Prague this year, the panel aims to include local discussions to the international conference. This panel will bring together scholars and activists who work alongside minority communities and invites those interested in Roma rights, and more generally, minority rights, to discuss identity creation, media representation, and the challenges that these groups experience.

Organizers: Public Relations Society of China (PRSC), the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA), and the Department of Marketing Communication and Public Relations at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.

Description: This preconference invites participants from different disciplines to discuss trust building, authentic communication, and dialogue in a diverse society. Topics include but not limited to: What is (constructive) dialogue in the organization-public context? What are the processes, principles, and conditions of dialogue in the East and the West? What are the role and impact of authenticity in dialogue and trust building? Whether social media and communication technology undermine or facilitate dialogue and trust?

THU24 MAY

From Fragmentation to Integration: Addressing the Role of Communication in Refugee Crises and Resettlement Processes

Description: This pre-conference emerges from the ongoing refugee crisis at the Mediterranean Sea, but is open to cover different humanitarian crises worldwide, calling for dialogue between scholars and practitioners interested in the roles played by Communication regarding this multifaceted challenge. The urgency and relevance of this topic appeals to the scholarly commitment to propose applied solutions to decision-making bodies and involved organizations. Discussing the role of mass and social media, and intercultural communication in this context turns into a must for our research community.

THU24 MAY

9th Annual Doctoral Consortium of the Communication and Technology Division, co-sponsored by the Mobile Communication Interest Group

Description: The consortium will bring together PhD candidates conducting research on various types of communication technologies and mobile communication to give them the opportunity to present and discuss their research in a constructive and international atmosphere. The objectives of the event are to provide feedback and advice to participating PhD candidates on their in-progress research thesis. Moreover, the doctoral consortium will provide the opportunity to meet experts as well as fellow PhD candidates from different backgrounds working on related topics. During the consortium, students and faculty will be organized into groups of 5-8 people, determined by the thematic nature of the research. One group will be dedicated to mobile communication, the remaining groups to the broader area of communication and technology. In each group, students will be invited to present their work, and receive feedback from their fellow students and faculty participants, all of whom will have read the proposals in advance of the Doctoral Consortium (DC). Each proposal will receive detailed feedback from two to three faculty participants. There will also be two poster sessions to allow participants from other groups to learn about and comment on the research of the PhD candidates. In addition to the presentation and critique of proposals, there will be discussion of issues related to making the transition from graduate student to faculty member. The topics will include positioning oneâ€™s work for the job market, strategies for publication, the interviewing process and other aspects of faculty job searches. Anticipating a time when participants will have an academic position, the discussion will include issues like managing workload and working relationships, finding a work/life balance, and ways of being a successful academic.

Description: This day-long colloquium follows the format of a workshop. After an introductory session, students will break into two groups, based on the focus of their research, and will each present work that has been submitted beforehand to a senior scholar with whom they have been matched. The scholar will then provide feedback and open the floor for questions from attendees. Students will then convene in one room for the closing session, a panel session featuring established researchers will be tailored to participant's research or publishing needs.

THU24 MAY

Games Everywhere, Gaming Everywhere: On the Edge of Ubiquity, From Mobile to Virtual and Augmented Reality Games and Beyond

Description: Games are relocating themselves from "traditional" locations towards formerly exclusive private (e.g., bedroom, bathroom) and public spots (e.g., public transportation, classrooms). This emergence of additional gaming contexts goes hand in hand with technological innovation resulting in novel experiences for both players and their surroundings. This preconference focuses on gaming beyond the prototypical desktop and TV to explore evolving player demographics, new gaming practices, and psychological consequences arising from the near-ubiquity of games in everyday life.

Description: Media are gendered and sexualized while gender and sexuality are heavily mediated. At this pre-conference, we will examine the intersections between media, gender and sexuality from a European perspective, particularly from the perspective of underrepresented contexts such as Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. How do European contexts matter for those intersections? How are those intersections manifested in Europe? What are the legacies and the futures of European gender, feminist, sexuality and LGBTQ media studies?

Description: The field of public relations has grown in the last thirty years both academically and professionally. As a result, the theoretical landscape of public relations has expanded beyond its organisational origins. The aim of this pre-conference is to discuss and reflect on what might be considered as current theories of public relations and theories for public relations, as well as emerging bodies of work that are changing the shape of the field.

Description: Elections reporting is one of the most studied areas of journalism studies and political communication. From longstanding debates about agenda setting to more recent inquiries about the mediatization of politics, the theory and practice of much scholarship is guided by how the media report elections. But in an increasingly fragmented news environment, where people rely on an ever-expanding range of media to understand what is happening in the world, election reporting is changing across new content platforms and providers. As the Reuters 2017 Digital News Report established, many democracies now rely to a greater extent on online rather than broadcast news, with new social media platforms playing a greater role in disseminating information than newspapers. In the 2017 UK election campaign, for example, the rise of alt-left online media was considered critical to enhancing the Labour Party's popularity, while Conservative-supporting newspapers were viewed as having less agenda setting power.

The Environmental Communication Division Graduate Student Pre-conference will bring together students working in environmental communication and similar fields with experienced scholars. We invite graduate students, post-docs and other researchers who work in topics related to the environment, science, natural resources, and sustainability to submit their work. Our goals for this half day pre-conference are to provide a forum to connect with other scholars, gather feedback on research projects, and receive advice pertaining to early career success from leading experts in the field. We hope you’ll join us for the inaugural Environmental Communication Division Graduate Student Pre-conference at the 2018 ICA conference.

Pre-conference format:
The morning will start with short presentations and a poster session in small group settings. Each group will include, in addition to fellow graduate students and researchers, leading scholars in the field of environmental communication. Presenters will receive feedback from peers, colleagues, and faculty on research projects at any stage in their development. After a networking coffee break, the invited scholars will share insights regarding career opportunities, publishing, and future directions of environmental communication research.

THU24 MAY

Embracing the Network Paradigm: New Directions in Strategic Communication Research

Description:Across the social sciences, scholars are increasingly applying a network perspective to examine a range of phenomena. A network perspective reasons that relationships are the basic building blocks of societies and it helps us to answer questions about the connections among individuals, groups, organizations, as well as nonhuman actors. Contemporary communication and media systems have amplified the significance of networks (van Dijk, 2006) and have led scholars to theorize how and why networks at the micro, meso and maco levels influence the processes of production, experience, power, and culture (Castells, 2009). Previous communication network research has predominantly focused on studying the structure or potential effects of networks. But few have treated networks as dependent variables that can be strategically shaped by communication practitioners. This existing gap is why strategic communication has considerable potential to advance network research. Likewise, the strategic communication fields stand to benefit from the innovative network theories and methodologies that can capture the complexities of modern communication phenomena. Strategic communication scholarship has witnessed considerable growth in the number of network-based studies over the past decade. Drawing from the management literature (Rowley, 1997), scholars have long called for strategic communication research to move away from a dyadic, organizational-centric orientation (Monge & Contractor, 2003; Yang & Taylor, 2015), to a network-based purview that encompasses the complexity and interconnectedness of communicators (Shumate & Oâ€™Connor, 2010; Taylor & Doerfel, 2005). We believe that the network perspective can offer a sophisticated theoretical explanation of how complex relationships affect many aspects of strategic communication. Therefore, we invite quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method studies that use the range of network analytic techniques (i.e. whole and ego-network approaches). Studies may include, but are not limited to, data from hyperlinks, semantic texts, social media, â€œbigâ€ data, secondary sources, and offline interaction patterns among individuals, groups, and/or organizations. In an effort to advance the adoption and development of network theory and research in strategic communication scholarship and practice, we propose this preconference.

Description: This seminar is relevant for PhD students within the research field of Public Relations and Strategic Communication at different stages of their dissertation process. The aim of the seminar is to provide doctoral students in the field of Public Relations and Strategic Communication with an opportunity to discuss their dissertation research in a constructive atmosphere. Students receive feedback and advice on their projects, theoretical frameworks, methodologies and research designs from senior scholars and other students, who review the proposals.

Description: Online communication and audience analytics go hand in hand these days. Analytical software packages such as Chartbeat and Parse.ly offer live observational data about website visitors, their preferences, and their usage behaviors. In light of this flood of information, one might expect audience analytics to influence communicators. This preconference aims to unite researchers from multiple countries to report and discuss potential influences and outcomes at the intersection of online communication and audience analytics.

THU24 MAY

Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool: Presentations and a Hands-on Workshop

Description: The preconference aims to introduce an emerging content analysis method â€œcrowdcodingâ€ to communication researchers through research presentations and a hands-on workshop. Instead of relying on a few human coders to conduct analysis, this approach outsources â€œcodingâ€ tasks to numerous people online and applies an aggregation policy to make decisions. The method is popular in computer science and has just begun to attract scholarly attention in social science.

Description: Human communication gravitates increasingly toward digital and data technology. This trend is rather salient in many countries. In China, for example, 751 million (54.3%) of the Chinese population use the Internet, and a majority of them (96.3%) access the Internet through their mobile devices. It is common for users â€“ especially the young generations â€“ to handle every aspect of life and work on smartphones, including reading news, paying bills, ordering meals and getting entertained. It is safe to say the our society has been transformed by digital technology and data.

Description: The session would take up the issue of feminist communication theories, their scope and reach in a globalized world. After discussions about feminist theory in communication peaked over a decade ago, the subject has not received sustained current attention, despite significant work and critiques by transnational feminists. While important feminist work still is being conducted across speech, rhetoric, journalism, mass communication, and digital technologies, it is time to take stock.

THU24 MAY

Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices

Description: The pre-conference reviews the performative and expressive dimension of our routine engagement with media. It brings together scholars from communication, anthropology, and sociology in order to scrutinize the kind of agency necessary to articulate voices and it considers how voices are expressed, represented, or muted. With that, the pre-conference strives for an explanation and critical appreciation of media-related practices as a perennial issue and a pervasive exercise in which we find ourselves immersed.

Description: This preconference takes as its starting point the premise that the history of networks is fundamental to the history of communication itself, and aims to reassess the significance of networks in communication history by bringing together research into both social and material networks, exploring how these networks have evolved over time.

THU24 MAY

Voice and Voices: Exploring Tensions Between Plurivocity and Univocity

Description: As pointed by Robichaud et al. (2004), any (individual or collective) actor, in order to exist and be recognized as such, has at some point to be able to speak in one voice. Given the multivocity that always characterizes persons and collectives, these passages from polyphony to monophony and from monophony to polyphony are not without creating tensions between what Bakhtin (1981) identified as centripetal vs. centrifugal forces. In this preconference, we encourage scholars and researchers from many divisions to explore the nature, dynamics and regulation of these tensions by focusing on communicational events, whether in the context of organizations, political parties, governments, public debates, tribunals, psychiatric treatments or mundane conversations. We particularly encourage participants to theorize and analyze the mobilization, articulation and conciliation of alternative voices, such as the voices of facts, absent or dead persons, ecosystems, spirits, or texts, among others.

Description: ICA Rationale: The ability of machines to interact with humans in human-like ways has increased tremendously since the introduction of personal computers. In the past few years alone, a whole host of robotic and digital technologies, from Apple's Siri to Amazon's Echo, have been made available to the average consumer. Human-Machine Communication is a developing area of research within the study of communication. At ICA's 2015 Conference in Puerto Rico, several scholars (led by Dr. Andrea Guzman) convened a BlueSky Workshop regarding HMC that brought together approximately 25 researchers from throughout the discipline. Participants agreed that an in-depth forum was needed to showcase the different ways scholars from across ICA were engaging in HMC research and to allow these scholars to address shared theoretical and methodological questions. At the 2016 meeting of ICA, the first post-conference regarding this topic was held (led by Dr. Andrea Guzman). This meeting had 25 scholars present papers and discuss the future of human-machine communication as a potential area of scholarship at ICA. The 2017 meeting of ICA in San Diego built upon this success where over 32 presentations by over 50 scholars created a memorably an impactful event. The hashtag #hmc17 was the 4 most used hashtag for the 2017 conference. Over the past two years participants indicated a strong desire to continue with this format of an ICA pre-conference and we believe attendance will increase.

THU24 MAY

Data and Publics: A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere?

Description: Despite the growing interest in data and society, relatively little attention has been paid to the implications of a data society for the forms and dynamics of publics and public communication. If the institution of the modern public sphere has always aspired to a degree of autonomy vis-Ã -vis its critical targets, what happens when its targets â€“ be they government or business entities â€“ begin to actively incite the production of public discourse and then harvest it as data for profit or surveillance? Does the advent of a data society lead to a new structural transformation of the public sphere? This preconference invites scholars to rethink the meaning and practices of publics and public communication in this new data society. Possible paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: transparency of public data privacy of personal data data activism data and governance data and surveillance algorithms and publics algorithms in journalism data as discursive formation data journalism and publics data visualization and public communication big data and deceptions in politics data and the global public sphere.

Description: This preconference will focus on pedagogical innovations using deliberative pedagogy, a method of teaching recently publicized in the Michigan State University Press 2017 book, Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement. Participants will engage the theory of deliberative pedagogy and think about it for their particular institutional and pedagogical contexts. Three faculty (from the United States, Israel, and Romania) will co-lead this pre-conference.

Description: Voices have capacity take on many different forms. For a start, research questions aimed at examining voices provide an entry point into addressing societal and philosophical problems. Scholarly conferences and the implications of visuals in association to voices are a necessity within the halls of academia and the practice of contemporary research. This pre-conference attempts to encompasses all of the definitions of voices and particularly how these voices are visually represented or not, in the still-growing field of visual communication. We bring together a critical mass of young and senior scholars to discuss, reflect, and challenge each other on the complexity of voices as a concept and its relationship to the world of visual communication.

Description: Recent years have seen a growing interest in the concept of justice in media and communication studies. In the more general literature on social justice, an important contribution has come from the capabilities approach developed by Indian economist Amartya Sen and US philosopher Martha Nussbaum. The theory challenges utilitarian narratives and liberal notions of redistributive justice and has become the cornerstone of the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Despite its potentially great relevance for media industries and production studies, information and communication for development, telecommunications and media policy, and digital media research, there has been limited use of the capabilities approach across the media, communication and cultural studies field.
By bringing together for the first time scholars engaged in applying the capabilities approach to media and communications, this ICA preconference advances an agenda to create a new interdisciplinary focus in the field. It aims to build conceptual bridges across emerging frameworks for studying communicative capabilities, media practice, and digital literacies and to engage with normative debates about media justice, creative justice, and data justice. The preconference directly engages with the central theme of the ICA Annual Conference on “Voices” by inviting reflection on the ways we can address inequalities and enhance communicative opportunities for media workers and users in a global context.

The preconference will feature a keynote address by Nick Couldry (London School of Economics) and panels in which invited speakers, as well as panelists selected in a competitive process will introduce theoretical papers and studies applying the capabilities approach to policy debates, development interventions, and normative media theories.

WED23 MAY

Conceptualizing New Silk Roads as Communication: Towards A New International Order?

Description: One Belt, One Road (OBOR), known as new silk roads in the West, is Chinaâ€™s ambitious developmental and foreign policy initiative unveiled in 2013. It is aimed at creating dense connectivity of capital, goods, and people across the Eurasian surface, with a possible effect of rewiring global economic networks while further centralizing China in the global economy as a regional and even global power. As a foreign policy, OBOR signals not only Chinaâ€™s willingness to participate in global economic governance but also its vision and maneuver to decenter the post-war US liberal hegemonic system in Asia and beyond. The rise of parochial and anti-globalization tendencies on the international scene, exemplified by Brexit, Trumpâ€™s presidency, and the ascent of terrorism, are complicating OBOR but also giving China an unprecedented opportunity to redefine the territoriality, power formation, and political economy of globalization. Experts from area studies and International Relations have begun to engage with OBOR as a crucial and grandiose China-centric project. They ask, will OBOR facilitate a new international order or buttress the existing capitalist world order? With Chinaâ€™s rise, OBOR as a state-led global intervention extends traditional inquiry about globalization and, just as important, encourages closer attention to contestation, international order, transformation of states, and new requirements of global capitalism.

Description: The idea of the Digital Asia preconference series was borne in 2012 of collaborative thinking between two academic units: the Nam Center for Korean Studies, University of Michigan, U.S.A., and the WKW School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. One of this preconference’s main goals is to extend the ICA’s already wide international reach by bringing together COMM scholars whose research concerns Asia—whether it deals with a particular country or some comparative questions.

THU24 MAY

Emerging Research and Trends in Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding - Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Conference

Description: This preconference aims to be a forum for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers to present and discuss their ongoing work on public diplomacy and nation branding. We welcome any topics, including digital diplomacy, evaluation & measurement of public diplomacy, theory building in public diplomacy, countries soft power, the role of cities, nation branding, etc. Established scholars will mentor and give feedback to each participant.

Description: Narratives have been attracting the interest of scholars in various fields of communication. While much research effort has been dedicated to short-term effects, substantially less is known about long-term effects of narrative forms of communication. This preconference will shed light on this understudied aspect and (1) discuss theoretical approaches to long-term effects of narrative communication, (2) reflect on capabilities of narratives to involve audiences (3) present current empirical research on long-term effects.
For any further information please see the preconference website: https://www.zen.ifp.uni-mainz.de/corinna-oschatz/ica-precon-long-term-effects-in-narrative-communication-research/call-for-papers/.

Description: The purpose of this pre-conference is to promote an intellectual exchange regarding the way the news media interacts with social, political, symbolic and technological changes in Latin America. Building on the core themes of the conference, we encourage submissions that analyze the role of the media in enabling or constraining a plurality of voices in the region. The expression of this plurality of voices is conditioned by existing communicational and structural legacies; by naturalized interactions between social political actors and institutions; by media policies and journalistic routines, as well as by the impact of digital and technological developments. We welcome submissions that explore innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to the role of the media in promoting pluralism. The conference will explore the relationship between media and governance from a range of fields in social sciences and humanities, such as journalism studies, political communication, global communication, digital media, LGBT studies, political science, of discourse analysis, among others. We are interested in presentations that address, but are not limited to, the following topics: Theories and Methods: How can current debates in Latin America contribute to theoretical and methodological debates on media and governance beyond the region? How can we analyze media and governance in Latin America and in the light of current debates in the Global South? How can the Latin American scholarship contribute to the de-westernize media studies? How can scholars build stronger theoretical and methdological tools for overcoming the â€œcase studyâ€ fixation? To which extent can comparative studies reinvigorate academic debates in the region? Media Structures, Pluralism, and Good Governance: Are current media structures in the region fostering or inhibiting the expression of a plurality of voices? What is the relationship between media governance and the promotion of a plural debate? How are the news media interacting with the state, the private sector, civil society and the public for the promotion of a plural debate? What is the role of the media in overcoming pervasive phenomena that hinder good governance, such as censorship, clientelism, populism, or the concentration of media ownership? Media and Political Representation: What journalistic practices and organizational dynamics favor the inclusion of a plurality of voices in Latin America? How are the news media addressing topics that affect good governance in the region, such as violence, inequality, or corruption? To which extend are digital communication platforms incorporating previously marginalized themes (such as racial, gender and class-based inequality) and actors (indigenous communities, women, LGBT minorities)? Whose voices are more visible when it comes to on-going debates on pluralist media policy? Communication for Social Change: What impact are agents of change, such as civil society groups, having in the media visibility of a range of voices and issues? How are online and offline digital platforms being used for giving voice and empowering previously marginalized communities? What is the impact of digital technologies and Internet access on social inequality, and how is the informational gap being addressed in the region? Papers will be accepted in English andÂ Spanish.Â However,Â authors must provide a title and abstract in English for the conference proceedings.

Description: The field of communication policy research is characterized by regular disussions of its status and progress, discussions that take on a more critical edge and urgency in the current disruptive times. Yet research designs and methods for policy research are rarely discussed. This is all the more surprising given that the media and communication -- and communication research -- environments are changing in ways that alter not just the relationships between the governing and those they govern, but also the policy tools available. We need to look critically at existing methods that require re-evaluation and retuning, while we must familiarize ourselves and take a critical look at innovative tools for studying policy problems, policy-making processes, and the effects of laws and regulations once put in place. Each panel will include well-prepared opening presentations chosen competitively will be followed by a respective response by an invited scholar, after which the floor is open for an exchange of ideas.

THU24 MAY

The Participatory Turn Ten Years Later: Trust/Distrust and Engagement/Disengagement

Description: This ICA preconference marks the anniversary of ‘the participatory turn’: a decade ago, there was widespread optimism about the creative, economic and democratic potential of audience participation in the media. In the passing decade, both positive and negative implications of ‘the participatory turn’ have come to the forefront of media debate and scholarship. ‘The participatory turn’ has led not only to increased engagement and involvement, but also to participatory fatigue, disengagement and resistance. This preconference explores how participation as a concept, strategy and practice has developed over the last decade, and engages participants in a dialogue concerning contradictions and dilemmas. Keynote speaker is Marke Deuze (University of Amsterdam).

THU24 MAY

Inclusivity and Family Communication Research: Advances and Innovations from Across the Discipline

Description: Scholarship related to family communication continues to be of interest to many scholars across the communication discipline. Although the flagship publication for family communication scholarship, Journal of Family Communication, tends to publish research in interpersonal and relational contexts, it is not unusual to see families studied in a variety of other contexts including health communication, media studies, organizational communication, communication law and policy, and cultural studies, to name only a few. Despite a large volume of research related to communication and families, seldom do these various contexts have the opportunity to put their theories, assumptions, approaches, and research findings in conversation. Often family communication studies draw from literature in one contextual area; and, similarly, those research studies are presented back to people within that same sub-area of the field. Although valuable scholarship is undoubtedly generated in these silos, one has to wonder how much family communication scholars from across the field can benefit from each other's work. With this possibility in mind, we propose this preconference to allow family communication scholars to come together and embrace what we have to offer each other and how we might work together to advance family communication studies across the field.

POSTCONFERENCES

TUE29 MAY

Lobbying and Democracy: The Voice of Communication

OFF-SITE | the Department of Marketing Communication and PR, Charles University in Prague; room 215

This post-conference focuses on the role communication plays for lobbying and democracy. Topics include, but are not, limited to, a focus on evaluation of communication strategies in light of democratic ideals, the use of particular argument types, as well as communicative attempts to fuse private and public interests.

Three panels focus on share values and the public interest; media use and advocacy, as well we legitimacy, roles and democracy.

Description: Building on the growing interest in scholarship about and in China by ICA members and communications scholars worldwide, we propose a preconference that honors the voices of past and emerging Chinese scholars. Now that the 40th anniversary of Chinese Communication Scholarship is approaching, we invite scholars to participate in the ICA Preconference combined with the 8th Global Communication Forum. In 1978, two independent publications from Fudan University in Shanghai and Peopleâ€™s University in Beijing revealed contemporary thinking about public relations, mass communication, and journalism from Western perspectives. Over the course of the ensuing 40 years, the prominence of these areas has endured, yet new areas and methodologies have produced more sophisticated, nuanced, and Chinese-centered scholarship in these and other communication contexts. Using this 40 year landmark, this preconference celebrates past accomplishments while tracing themes and insights into the present as a foundation for innovative Chinese scholarship in the upcoming decade(s). Since the birth and development of China's Communication scholarship, there has always been dialogues and cooperation between East and West, between Chinese and international scholars. This is also a process of interaction and integration between globalization and localization of Communication theories and practices. The Chinese Communication scholarship has its own power and influence in political, economic, technological, cultural and other aspects of the countryâ€™s development in the past four decades. After forty years of efforts, Chinaâ€™s Communication discipline has reached a mature stage.We look forward to reviewing the past forty yearsâ€™ dissemination of the discipline with scholars from China and overseas through dialogues and reflections. We will examine and discuss the past achievement, existing problems, as well as different voices in the context of globalization and localization. We also look into the future for the next ten years and beyond. A crucial question is â€œHow can we facilitate more productive collaborations among and incorporate the different voices of International Communication Association and Chinese communication scholars?â€ Communication researchers have the responsibility to seek answers; against the background of globalization, China and the rest of the world cannot be separated. Therefore, this combined ICA Preconference and Eighth Global Communication Forum opens a platform for researchers interested in the Voices of Chinese Scholars Over the Last 40 years. We cordially invite people and scholars from all over the world to share their findings, exchange insights, and make efforts to promote communication research.